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Search engines favor well designed web sites
with plenty text content for their top rankings.
Here's some tips on how to design a web site to
be ranked at the top in the search engines.
Text Content
The cornerstone to your web site is the text content.
Make sure the site contains plenty subject matter
right from the start. Your home page will introduce
and describe the content of the site while each
section goes into more detail on the relevant
subject.
When adding text content to your site, identify
the key search terms and use them in context.
Where possible highlight the search terms by placing
them in bold text or within H1 tags. This makes
the key search terms stand out so that search
engines mark them as being important.
Frames
Although all search engines claim to be able to
navigate frames, they still complicate matters.
The best advice is to avoid frames entirely. Framed
sites are listed in search engines, but no matter
how many tricks are employed, they never seem
to get listed as high as their non-frames equivalent.
If you have a frames based site, consider rebuilding
it without frames. You'll see your listings skyrocket.
Page Forwarding
Many sites are now using page forwarding. It is
used on the home page of a site to determine if
a visitor has Flash installed, or what browser
they are using. After testing the visitors' machine,
they are then forwarded to the appropriate real
home page.
This practice does not help with search engine
listings. Your home page should be designed to
work with any browser, and visitors should be
given the choice of proceeding into a Flash site
or a standard HTML site. In any case, forwarding
past your home page is missing the chance to introduce
plenty of good text content to visitor or search
engine.
Heavy Graphics
Don't use too many graphics on each page, and
certainly don't embed valuable text in your graphics.
Search engine spiders see all graphics the same
- indecipherable binary code - and embedded text
will not be read.
Where you do use graphics, make sure to add alt-tags
to describe the image, including key words and
search terms where applicable.
Dynamic Pages
One of the great things about the internet today
is the immediacy of information. Dynamic web sites
make it possible to keep content bang up to date
with minimum effort. There is a fallacy that if
your site contains dynamic pages search engines
will not index it. This belief is only partly
true.
Search engines will visit any page, .asp, .php,
.cfm etc. If the URL for the page ends with the
extension such as /pagename.php it will be indexed
and added to the search engine. If however dynamic
information is passed within the URL e.g. pagename.php?section=2&user=xyz,
then the page will not be indexed.
The idea behind gaining listings for your dynamic
pages is to ensure that your home page and other
top level section pages do not include dynamic
information in the URL. Deeper into the site,
sure,
include all the dynamic information you want,
but at the top level make sure there is enough
apparently static information to gain some search
engine listings.
If you already run a fully dynamic site, take
a look at our optimization section for some ideas
on promotional and traffic capture pages.
Flash
Try and avoid building your main site entirely
in Flash. If you do, you'll also have to build
an alternative site in HTML or you will receive
no listings whatsoever. Search engines cannot
read anything within a Flash file.
The use of Flash within a web site is acceptable,
provided its use is monitored. Animation and moving
logos are great - they add interest and depth
to a site. Flash buttons and text embedded within
Flash is not so great. Search engines will not
follow the links to other pages and cannot read
or index any text within the Flash file. Use Flash
sparingly.
Navigation
Search engine spiders start at a site home page
and follow all the links within the site until
they reach a dead end before jumping to the next
site on their list. The key to good navigation
is to make sure that search engine spiders can
reach as much of your site as possible before
jumping to the next site.
At the very least, every page within your site
must have a link back to the home page. This is
crucial.
In addition, links to each of the other main pages
within the site help the spider move around more
efficiently.
If your main navigation is a set of buttons at
the top of the page, like in this site, add some
small text links at the bottom of each page just
to make it easier for search engines and visitors
to get around your site.
John Evans has been
successfully managing online business since September
2003.
http://www.freejokeshub.com
Article Source: http://www.article-planet.com
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